


gently

by monarchs



Category: The Social Network (2010)
Genre: Abusive Parents, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Car Accidents, Cybercrimes, Dubious Consent, Eventual Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kidnapping, M/M, Manipulation, Minor Character Death, Murder, Running Away, Sadomasochism, Serious Injuries, Sexual Content, Threesome - M/M/M, Trauma, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Violence, mafia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:09:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29078373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monarchs/pseuds/monarchs
Summary: Mark and Eduardo seek closure in the wrong places.
Relationships: Eduardo Saverin/Mark Zuckerberg
Comments: 9
Kudos: 18





	gently

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings** : noncon/dubcon, violence, glorification of violence, offscreen torture, serial killing, mild sadism/masochism, manipulation, threesome, other sexual content, abuse... see fic tags. That should cover it, but if there's anything you think should be tagged, please let me know asap. Please, everything's on the tin, please don't read this if any of this could upset you.
> 
> This isn't exactly the type of stuff I usually write, I know. I know you didn't sub to me for this. Anyways, I promise the next fic will be fluffy.
> 
> This was beta'd by Q (queuebird)! Without them you'd be reading absolute trash. I mean, I guess it's still trash, but they refined it!
> 
> I'm also going to take this opportunity to advertise an upcoming prompt challenge for The Social Network. It is called The Prompt Network. It's going to be COOL and you'll want to check it out over [here](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/thepromptnetwork/profile). We send out prompts fortnightly and you can produce any kind of fanwork for it. #revivetsn2021

“I guess this is it.”

Mark tries to forget the feeling of losing a best friend forever, and it’s as hard as he expected, if not harder. They sign the settlement, go through the motions, and then Mark is standing outside, watching Eduardo watch him. It’s January; the cold’s biting through skin, and their leather shoes sink in snow.

“Good-bye Mark,” Eduardo says, gently. A little too gently. The type of gently that implies he’s unwilling to let things finish on a bad note because otherwise it’ll never end. They’d never end. Mark knows because he knows Eduardo like the back of his own hand.

Mark doesn’t say anything back. The words are caught at the back of his throat like the start of a cold. He fucking hates it. Nodding, he forces himself to look, to memorize the last he’ll ever see of Eduardo. Of Wardo. His disheveled hair, the red of his cheeks, the million apologies that Eduardo didn’t owe him at all, left unsaid in his eyes.

Mark turns the other way and leaves. He doesn’t turn back.

A year later, Mark gets out of Facebook. He shuts out the world, and stays home. He watches the world from the rectangle window of his laptop, haunts memories of what once was, drops off the radar completely.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Mark plants an elm tree not long after Facebook. It has grown an average of four feet every year since. It is now well over twenty feet. Gardening doesn’t become a hobby though, and it stops at that elm tree. Mark’s interests have always been in the ruthless emptiness of code lines, and he has no qualms doing what he does best. 

It doesn’t take too long before he finds amusement in cyber infiltration. DDoS attacks. Exploring the dark web on lonely nights. Claiming the throne in spaces where you can be both somebody and nobody. 

The tree grows to thirty feet when Mark first steals classified information for, well, business. He sells it to the highest bidder and watches the figures go up with a smile.

It should have stopped, but it doesn’t. And while Mark knows the cautionary tales, the things his conscience would say if he still had one, or the charges he’d face if he got caught, he doesn’t fucking care.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
In his mind, it all started with Wardo. 

Not Eduardo, not Mr. Saverin. Wardo. 

And it’s easy to blame it on him, this guy who probably doesn’t exist anymore, even though no one pushed Mark past the point of no return.

But sometimes it rings true. Sometimes he tells himself this is his origin story. And the dilution, the depositions, and the settlement were just the tip of the iceberg. The first beer of the night.

It’s the—

“You had one friend.”

Probably. That hit the bullseye.

But you forget about your first loves with time.

Mark doesn’t smile when he presses ‘enter’.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Mark’s still got the green dart from Kirkland. It’s lost one wing, but is otherwise still functional. He is chewing on it when he sees it.

Eduardo Saverin’s name.

There are more than 310 million people in the US, but somehow Mark lands on his name while looking up the listings of patients in hospitals around Cleveland for some mafia don who wants to exact revenge on a rat.

Mark opens Eduardo’s patient file and scans it. 

Grade 3 concussion. Partial blindness. Third-degree burns. Genital and anal injuries. Acute respiratory distress. A missing toe. 

Mark tries not to imagine the toe, but it’s too late.

He closes the file calmly before he shuffles to the bathroom in time to hurl into the toilet.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
He visits Eduardo, but he doesn’t go further than the doorway. Eduardo is sleeping, his face partially turned towards the daylight coming from the window. He has a scar running across his forehead, through his left eye and down his cheek. His lips are dry, his skin a little rough, but otherwise Wardo hasn’t changed. Not much.

Seeing Eduardo changes Mark.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Because Mark still dreams about Kirkland. He sees Wardo and Dustin and Billy and Chris and Andrew and all of them - back when life was simple, back when life was just the Harvard network crashing overnight. 

Back when a couple of beers would do the thing.

Back then, if he’d had the guts to grab Eduardo by the collar and kiss him, they would have had everything. 

Everything.

Instead he’ll dream of whoever did those things to Eduardo. He’ll dream of those things happening to him. (The slash of a shiv across his face. The impact of his skull against the windshield. Wax rolling off his skin. The multitude of bodily intrusions he didn’t warrant, after having to choose between silence, secrets, suffering.)

And he’ll dream of closing his fingers around the person’s neck until he hears something break inside of him.

The dreams ensnare him.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Mark does his groceries at a farmers’ market. When the farmers recognize him he reminds himself to smile. 

“Alexander,” greets one of them warmly. He hands Mark a sizeable paper bag. “I threw in a couple o’ extra potatoes. You can bake ‘em with the chicken.” The farmer does a chef’s kiss. 

Mark wonders if Eduardo would think he looks like an Alexander. “Thank you, Tom.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Each injury happened at a different time.

The ARD was a year ago, and Eduardo had been sent to the same Cleveland hospital. The scar's a brownish colour, so probably not recent. There’s nothing on the toe, so Mark categorizes that as something that may have to do with the face scar. The burns and concussion are the reasons why he’s back again this time — he had been in a car accident. The rest, Mark doesn’t want to think about.

He turns on his laptop and summons a list of Eduardo’s doctors instead.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
It’s a long journey ahead.

Mark hacks into the traffic surveillance camera, rotates it westward, and watches a man in a black suit shoot a doctor in the guts. The man wipes his gun, puts it away, and whips out a phone from his pocket.

“—dealt with,” the man says into the receiver. “You gonna report to Ferreira?” 

Mark finds everything he can on Ferreira. 

The name leads to a João, then a Silva, a Santos, an O’Brian. Then it leads Mark to a short audio clip attached to an email.

“P-por favor…. te imploro…” It’s unmistakably Eduardo. 

It throws Mark for a loop. His mind conjures memories of Eduardo speaking to his father on the phone in hushed tones of Portuguese. 

But this is something else.

“Sabe o que nós queremos,” someone says. Mark’s computer translates that to _you know what we want_. 

“Não sei de nad—” 

Eduardo’s words turn into screams and sobs. The clip ends.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
It’s not the end. Mark uncovers more as he traces their cyber footprints.

He listens to them while he does his laundry.

“You Americans think you're so untouchable… Where is the key?” a stranger demands.

They are answered with silence. 

“You don’t seem to love your son as much as we’d like.” There’s some rustling, grunting. “Speak, Saverin Junior. Let your daddy know you’re alive.” 

That’s answered with silence as well. 

“It’s going to be a long night, boys. Do you like candles, Eduardo?”

There’s the sound of sizzling, dripping, cicadas on a hot summer’s day. 

Eduardo shrieks. The shriek morphs into a low growl that then crescendos into a weary scream, like the agonizing sound of nails scratching concrete.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The loudest Mark’s ever heard Wardo was when he smashed Mark’s work laptop in pieces. It had been frightfully intimate, the way Eduardo took the dilutions so personally. Even now, Mark finds that memory rather disquieting.

Yet, in the audio files, his screams are impersonal. 

Mark can hear it. The immutable willpower Eduardo exercises, persistence dripping like honey from his voice, unyielding to physical coercion or emotional extortion. And it only means that Eduardo _knows_ something. 

Eduardo has something everyone wants.

Soon enough, Mark starts wanting it too.

It seduces him like a siren would a sailor. He sees Eduardo in a completely new light.

He listens to the audio files to sleep, so he can better recognize the voices of the perpetrators, and indulge in the previously unknown range of Wardo’s vocalizations.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
He dreams of Wardo. It’s different from his previous reveries.

There’s nothing soft about this one. No heartbreaking ‘what if’s, no carefree Kirkland quartet watching Shark Week, no mellow light, dulcet tones, only the dark and amber night of shadows and penumbras in Eduardo’s single.

Eduardo is holding Mark down by the neck. There are seven light sources in the room, and though they’re only small lamps, dimly lit, Mark feels exposed.

He is exposed. He’s not wearing anything, only a sheet of perspiration, the sweat of anxiety, his breath caught like prey by an apex predator.

It takes Mark a while to understand that there's delight in Eduardo’s half-lidded eyes. Mark struggles, just to see what would happen. He’s pinned down harder. 

“So you like how I sound when I moan,” Eduardo says.

Mark doesn’t know if he wants to nod or shake his head. His cheeks fill with heat and he feels like he'll pass out any second. 

Eduardo leans down close and lets his breath warm Mark’s skin. Gently. Too gently. 

It implies too many things, but Mark can’t concentrate enough to figure them out. He gasps when Eduardo loosens the grip on his neck. Then he coughs, hacks for air, sobs.

“You want to know, don’t you? What I know,” Eduardo murmurs, eyes dark. His hand snakes down, and he grabs Mark’s dick. He strokes once, forming a tight ring, then stops at the base. 

Mark’s vision sizzles and shakes, so he closes his eyes and tries to remember to breathe.

Of course he wants to know.

“Not bad,” Eduardo comments as he sizes Mark’s girth. He leans down and kisses the head, licks the slit and, without much warning, starts swallowing him, inch by inch. 

It's too much, too fucking much, so fucking much Mark feels like he can come twice right away. He doesn't know how to process these feelings, not when the last he remembers of Eduardo is nothing like this. 

He remembers the depositions, the cold glares, how Eduardo would only speak to him through Gretchen, how Eduardo looked like he’d never forgive Mark, ever.

Mark gasps when his cock slides out of Eduardo’s lips, like he’s surfacing from an ocean. Eduardo starts groaning, hissing. His voice is hoarse and inexplicably weary before it turns into something else. Something both delicate and dirty.

Mark opens his eyes.

A faceless man is standing behind Eduardo. He is grabbing him by the shoulder, pulling him back, taking Eduardo from behind, and Mark doesn't see it, not really, but he can feel it, feel Eduardo taking the stranger’s cock to the hilt in one breath, one swift motion.

Eduardo’s face is flushed, and too close. Their bodies rock to the rhythm of whoever is fucking Eduardo. Eduardo's grip on Mark's cock moves along slightly, edging him.

It doesn't take long before Eduardo starts bouncing back.

“Faster,” Eduardo prompts. “Harder.”

Mark flushes up and tries to look elsewhere.

Eduardo pulls back like a bow when he comes. His body goes tense for a moment, and time seems to stop at this edge, at this border of desire. Eduardo’s head is thrown back, exposing his neck, the bronze sheen of skin. 

Mark swallows hard and comes too.

"Slut," interrupts the stranger in the shadows. He slaps Eduardo's ass then comes all over Eduardo's back. The sound of semen makes Eduardo come back almost immediately. His face softens, he goes slack, falls onto Mark with weight. 

The stranger takes a phone out and starts snapping photos. There's come on Mark's stomach, forearm, chin. He wonders if it's his or Eduardo's or that stranger's. It doesn't matter much. 

Eduardo wipes a white streak off Mark's skin, smells it and licks it up lazily. They stay like that for eternity, the sound of silence soothing. 

The stranger leaves with the door closing behind him.

“I'm no good for you, you know,” Wardo murmurs, at some point. He looks up and Mark sees tears and tired eyes.

Mark wakes up with a jolt.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Mark matches Silva’s voice to one of the people who hurt Eduardo.

Though Mark has information on Silva’s general whereabouts and his schedule, he needs something more specific.

He finds something better: two vengeful rivals who have been duped by Silva and who were accomplices in Eduardo’s torture sessions. 

Mark starts setting things up with a sort of zeal he’d forgotten he was capable of.

It brings him back to theFacebook. To Kirkland. 

To Eduardo's smile, Eduardo's _this looks really good_ , and praises like that.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Mark runs a car plate at the DMV because their database isn't quite online yet. He copies down the details of a limousine from a private rental company and gives the clerk a sheepish smile before he leaves.

The blood in his veins runs different. He feels reborn, like he's walking on water.

He finds Silva’s chauffeur Smith and offers him something he knows Smith cannot back out of. Not with the dirt Mark’s got on him, and the cliché of—

“Justice,” Mark says, raising his glass. “ _Justice_. Don’t we love it all.” 

Smith drinks to that with a smile.

Someone knocks on the door. Smith tenses up immediately, his hand on his gun, but Mark gestures, nonchalant, for him to calm down. “Just a token of my appreciation. I mean, without your help, O’Brian would have my head for breakfast,” Mark explains. He opens the door and not three, not four, but five gorgeous hookers come in.

Smith scoffs. “Oh, _Alexander_!” 

Mark doesn’t like the first-name basis, Smith has known him for a whole of thirty-six minutes.

Fuck him.

“Just Lex, please,” Mark replies nonetheless. He motions at the group of girls. “They’ll do anything. List your kinks. Bondage, pet play, watersports. Go wild.” He pushes his hands together.

“I’m not really into the wild stuff,” Smith admits. “But I like footjobs. A lot.”

Mark smiles as sympathetically as he can. “You like toes, huh?”

Smith grins like an idiot. The hookers start stripping and surrounding him.

Mark leaves the room when Smith isn’t watching. 

He goes back home and sends out a couple of emails under other names, notably under the name of Silva’s other enemy, O’Brian. 

Everything is set up.

Smith does as he is told. A week later, Silva’s car explodes without Silva in it. Smith tries to phone Mark because to him, the plan is screwed, but Mark doesn’t answer the temporary phone that’s already been discarded in a public bin somewhere in the busy streets of New York City. 

Smith only knows two names: Theodore O’Brian and underling Alexander Porter, who doesn’t exist. He probably begs Silva to spare him, probably tells him he had no choice, that O’Brian blackmailed him with his family’s lives. 

Silva won’t believe him, and he’ll shoot Smith point-blank in the head, dispose of him, and kill O’Brian when they meet up later on for a lunch that Mark had orchestrated. 

Then, when Silva returns home from the long day, he’ll walk through the garage and the place will explode from a cellphone Mark asked Smith to leave behind.

Everything goes as planned.

Mark knows because these people have family members with Facebook accounts, and because mafia feuds never stay too quiet in the first place.

Three down. Three more to go.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
There was this one time, before theFacebook, when Eduardo had missed an exam because of an internship interview his father had set up. Mark remembers how nervous Eduardo had been, the way he didn’t seem like he wanted to go at all, not on time, anyway, even though Eduardo was a punctual guy by nature.

“Just talk with the prof, I’m sure he’ll let you make up for it,” Chris had said. “Break a leg though.”

Eduardo smiled briefly in a way that seemed to imply he had completely forgotten about the exam. “Thanks. I’m not worried about— never mind. See you. Later, I guess.”

Eduardo came back with a bruise at the corner of his mouth he said he got from tripping down some steps and hitting the rail.

He didn’t get to make up the exam, nor did he get the internship. 

His father called that evening, and Eduardo had taken the reprimand without a word, other than the few, reluctantly surrendered, _sim, pai_.

Mark hadn’t said anything, only sat at his laptop, fingers resting on top of the keyboard, staring at Eduardo’s lowered head as Eduardo bit down everything he wanted to say.

Even after Eduardo hung up, they stayed like that for a couple of minutes, until Eduardo finally looked up and said, tired, “sometimes I wonder if he has a heart.” 

Mark hadn’t known what to say.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Mark could fill in the blanks with guesses, but it’ll always come back to the same question. What exactly does Eduardo have that is so invaluable to these men? What exactly does Eduardo know that warrants the things he’s going through? That makes him want to go through them in the first place? 

Mark replays an audio where a key is mentioned, and thinks. 

“The recorder’s on. Say hi to your pai, Edu.”

Eduardo doesn’t.

“Alright. Let’s get to business then. The key, son, and we promise we’ll be nicer.”

“What, you’ll kill me softly?”

A pause. “Santos, traga o balde.” 

_Santos, bring the bucket_.

Eduardo coughs and retches like he could die from it.

“Be mindful of what you say next, Eduardo.”

There is pregnant silence. And then: “I just hope you’ll think of me when you fuck your wife, Ferri.”

The audio file ends with a crack.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The next two guys - Ferreira and Santos - are easy. Too easy. Mark gets rid of them without breaking a sweat. Ferreira works a day job at a data centre and dies in a vacuum when Mark activates a fire alarm that automatically locks data room doors and sucks out oxygen. Santos, on the other hand, dies in a simpler fashion in a prison cell with a cell mate who is fond of knives.

It’s the third guy, João, who trumps Mark a little.

João is a ghost. Literally. On paper, he’s been dead for five years. He died of lung cancer, and his body was cremated somewhere in New Jersey.

But his name comes up in audio files as recently as a month ago, and it’s clear that he is behind the car accident Eduardo got into. 

Nothing is consistent or coherent about João. Not even his year of birth. He is immediately one of the most suspicious characters Mark has ever seen online, and that's saying something because he's seen a lot. 

It doesn’t annoy Mark so much as it intrigues him. He spends a day and a night trying to figure out if João’s name is even real. 

He doesn’t find an answer.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Eduardo gasps against Mark’s skin.

“I’ve always wanted to do this,” Eduardo says, almost laughing. Like it is such an impossible thing: being gentle to Mark and having Mark know it.

Eduardo fucks Mark open with such languor Mark can’t help but quiver. He struggles a little, searches frantically for something to ground him, but when he pulls his heel back, he only reels Eduardo home deeper.

Mark doesn’t stay as quiet as he’d like when Eduardo hits something deep in him, and starts aiming for it with every fuck when he realizes what it does to Mark. Mark moans and moans and moans and it’s too fucking much, he can’t do it, he can’t take anymore, he’s going to break.

He lets go, little by little, with every push and pull, all the pent-up emotions he’s repressed since god knows when. His whole body trembles, he whines, he bends to Eduardo’s will. It doesn’t take too long before Mark empties himself all over his stomach.

Eduardo gives Mark a moment even though he’s panting just as hard as he is. He caresses Mark’s cheek and then pushes their forehead together as their breaths even out.

“Can I kiss you?” Eduardo says.

Mark closes his eyes, immediately overwhelmed.

“Quero te beijar,” Eduardo whispers.

Mark feels high and dry, helpless, abandoned between feelings he doesn’t know how to describe.

He wants it. He wants it. He wants it. 

Mark wants it so bad it’s criminal. 

He grabs the back of Eduardo’s neck and begs.

He pleads, a broken sound at the back of his throat.

Eduardo licks his lips, leans down, and the moment stretches and stretches, and Mark can’t take it anymore, he’s going to go mad, go back on everything he believes, throw himself to the sea, to the fire. 

But Eduardo stops half an inch away from Mark’s lips. 

“João,” Eduardo whispers. “Kill him.”

Mark wakes up, ripped out so forcibly there’s no clean divide between remnants of the dream, and reality.

His empty room echoes the rest of Eduardo’s words.

And it’s all he can hear.

_Only you can, Mark_.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Mark goes into overdrive. 

He takes what he knows, prints them out, pins them on the wall, unrolls strings to connect all the points he needs.

Silva, O’Brian, Smith, Ferreira, Santos. 

All of them tortured Eduardo one way or another. Yet all of them kept him alive. 

João didn’t - not with his setup, the chances were too low for Eduardo to have survived the crash, so the intention must have been to dispose of him.

Mark replays the traffic camera video of the accident.

Eduardo kicks open the door right before the truck runs into the Mercedes. 

It has to mean something that he had time, no matter how infinitesimal, to evade death. It’s as if he foresaw what was coming at him, like a sixth sense.

It could mean one of three things. One, it’s sheer dumb luck that Eduardo breaks out of the car at the right time. Two, Eduardo is so used to the whole cat-and-mouse game, he’s learned to be rigorously attentive. Or three, he is particularly familiar with João’s style, which in turn means that João may be a man Eduardo knows well. Extremely well.

Mark sits down and fiddles with his fingers.

But the bigger picture is this: Silva and the others have been operating as individuals who lack certain information. They don’t know what Eduardo knows, hence the reason why they keep him alive. Whereas… João’s move to kill Eduardo proves that he doesn’t need Eduardo at all.

Eduardo’s only valuable to Silva as long as they’re unable to extract information out of him. On the other hand, Eduardo is a liability to João.

João knows where the key is, Mark realizes belatedly.

In fact, João might even know what it’s hiding, what it’s got behind locked doors. It might even be something that’s related to João himself.

Standing up abruptly, Mark grabs a marker, but before he can make it to the wall, something falls off Mark’s chair. His train of thought breaks, and he frowns, impatient, almost doesn’t want to bother glancing at whatever fell off his chair.

But it catches his eye. 

It’s his jacket.

His North Face jacket.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
It’s not his jacket.

It’s Wardo’s. 

Mark had packed it with his belongings when he moved out of Kirkland. He’s not entirely sure why. 

It brings back memories. 

There was this one time. Before Facemash. Eduardo had lost his signet ring, and was panicking, going through his things like an erratic storm, saying that he wouldn’t be able to eat or sleep until he found it. 

“You don’t get it. I’m meeting my father next week, I need to have that ring. I--”

Dustin was helping already because he was that kind of guy, but Mark hadn’t moved an inch from his computer. 

“When and where was the last time you saw it?” Chris had asked. “I have a class now, but I’ll help when I come back. Take a deep breath and trace your steps. Don’t worry, we’ll help you find it. Right, Mark?”

It’s always been easy for Mark to tune out things that are irrelevant, but that day he had felt particularly incapable of doing so. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that even back then, Mark felt uncomfortable hearing about Eduardo’s obsequious behaviour with his father.

“Whatever,” Mark had replied.

Later, Mark was the one who found the ring, inside the pocket of the North Face jacket he keeps stealing from Eduardo.

“Thank god,” Eduardo had said, closing his eyes, holding the ring like it was holy.

Mark had grabbed it, mostly to fool around, studying it with joking mockery. Dustin, who was right behind Mark, leaned down to check out the initials engraved inside the ring.

“Who’s J. S.?” Dustin had asked.

“Nobody,” Eduardo had responded, grabbing it back.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
João isn’t a fake name.

Roberto is.

And for Mark, Roberto is easy.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Before Mark goes to São Paulo, he visits Eduardo at the hospital.

“You’re family?” a nurse asks.

Mark thinks about Kirkland, thinks about the found family he lost.

“An old friend,” Mark clarifies.

_You had one friend._

The nurse softens her expression. “He’s awake, but still a little confused. Nothing too bad, but he does have transient global amnesia. That means he doesn’t remember what led up to his situation, and that he gets easily agitated figuring out what’s happening in the here and now.”

Mark doesn’t say anything.

The nurse looks nervous, seemingly from his lack of response. “Oh! It’s not very serious, not compared to the whole thing he’s been through, but it could be quite frightening, so we try not to trigger it too much. How long have you known each other?”

Mark looks down the hall and back at the nurse. “Can I just see him? It won’t take long.”

The nurse smiles sympathetically. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry. And of course. He’s right down the hall, second to last door on the left. We moved him after a small incident in his previous room.”

Mark perks up. “A small incident?”

“Yes, nothing big, you see, he just spilled something, and says he can’t take the smell.”  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
There’s a food tray in front of Eduardo, but he hasn’t touched a thing. 

He doesn’t notice Mark until Mark’s reached the foot of his bed.

“You’re not eating?” Mark says.

Eduardo startles. “Mark?” His voice is raspier than Mark remembers.

“Wardo,” Mark replies, then does a double take. “Unless, I can’t call you that anymore.”

Eduardo frowns. It’s clear he can’t believe Mark’s there. “No, that’s fine, I guess. Wardo’s fine. It’s— it’s nice.”

Mark nods. “How are you holding up?”

Eduardo laughs, sheepish. “Uh. They say I’m almost ready to go. I— I’m just waiting for the memories of the car accident to hit me, and then I’m good.”

“I hear it’ll be brutal,” Mark says.

“I can take it,” Eduardo replies easily.

Mark doesn’t question it. Eduardo’s tolerance of pain is… something else. 

Mark looks down at the linoleum floor and then back up. “I’ll drive you home when it’s all over,” he says, resolute.

Eduardo looks at him a little funny, like Mark’s grown a second head.

“When what is over?” Eduardo asks.

“Is that a yes or no?” Mark replies.

Eduardo seems unable to decide.

“Just. Be here when I come back to get you,” Mark says.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The trip to São Paulo is brief. 

Mark wears a three-piece suit and approaches João with a smile.

The second João sees him, he freezes. It’s clear he knows exactly who Mark is. It’s clear he has no idea what Mark wants with him, which is exactly what Mark wants.

João closes the door behind him and locks it.

“What are you doing here?” he demands.

“To put a face to your name,” Mark says, matter-of-fact. “I’m also here on business.”

“I have no business with you.”

Mark nods. “Let’s not beat around the bush. You know who I am, right?”

“It’s hard to forget the one who screwed my son out of his own company.”

Mark scoffs. “Let me introduce myself. I am the ex-CEO of Facebook, and I have the key.”

João’s eyes dilate. It’s clear Mark’s hit a nerve. João marches to the phone on his desk and dials line 2. 

But Mark’s quicker and has his Kirkland dart pressed against João’s neck, right where his pulse beats.

João tries to struggle, but Mark isn’t bluffing. He pushes the point in just enough to draw a trickle of blood. “I wouldn’t push it if I were you.” 

“You never struck me as a... perpetrator,” João says grimly.

Mark smiles. “You always struck me as a villain.”

“I should have known I couldn’t trust Eduardo with the USB key,” João practically growls. “He has failed me, over and over. It was a mistake to let the boy stay alive. It was a mistake to have let you go so easy as well.”

Mark doesn’t bother laughing at the irony. He leans forward and whispers in João’s ear. “Careful what you say from now on. You do what I want you to do, or the contents of that USB key are going to be all over Facebook.”

João drops the phone. It dangles off the desk. Mark reaches over and hangs up.

“What do you want? Money?” João grits through his teeth. “Revenge? What is it? You’ll get it, in exchange for that key.” 

Mark presses the dart harder. “If I wanted money, I would have stayed at Facebook,” he says. “I want things you can’t buy with money.”

João laughs wholeheartedly. “A happily ever after with Eduardo? He’s yours. I disowned him a long time ago.”

“Music to my ears,” Mark says. “But no, what I want is simpler.”

Mark can feel João swallow hard. “And what might that be, mister ex-CEO?”

“You go back with me to the US. We bond for a bit. And then I’ll let you leave. Simple.”

João laughs. “How do I know I’m not just walking into a trap? How do I know you really have the key?”

Mark smiles and lets João go. “You don’t.”

“Then--”

“You know exactly how much your son loves me,” Mark lies firmly. “Another word, and the contents of the key go live. Take it or leave it.”

João stays quiet, face twisted in disgust and anger.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Later, João leaves the office and gets on a plane to the US.

He never comes back.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
“Mark.”

Eduardo is standing at the entrance of the hospital, his back against the glass doors. 

“I’m actually an Alexander now,” Mark says, nonchalant. “Call me Lex.” Mark hands Eduardo a grey Harvard hoodie. “Wear this and give me your cell phone.”

Eduardo scowls at the hoodie, a little horrified. “What? Why—”

Mark grabs Eduardo’s cell phone from his hand and tosses it into a bin. “We’re taking the exit from the basement. Follow me.” 

Eduardo frowns, but he follows and sticks close. And then, as if tacitly understanding the situation, he says, with much disbelief, “you really don’t look like an Alexander.”

They climb into Mark’s rental sedan once they make it out on foot from a staff-only exit. “You should change your name too,” Mark says.

Eduardo scoffs. “To what?”

Mark starts the car. “I don’t know. Ralph Waldo Emerson, or something.”

“You’re going to keep calling me Wardo,” Eduardo says.

“You’re not wrong.” Mark takes a left.

“You know where I live?” 

“Sure. But it’s not where we’re going.”

They sit in silence. 

“Mark.”

“Yes?”

Eduardo takes a deep breath. “Whoever’s asking you to do this - you can’t trust them. And you can’t do this. After you get rid of me, they’ll get rid of you. So you need to stop the car—”

Mark doesn’t. “Wardo, relax.”

Eduardo doesn’t. “You’ll be living your life on the run.”

“We have a lot of catching up to do.”

Eduardo opens his mouth then closes it. He sits back, looking out the passenger window. “God, you’re as infuriating as ever.” 

“How were the memories?”

“What memories?” Eduardo shoots back, impatient.

“Your transient whatever amnesia. The car accident memories that are supposed to hit you like a truck. The nurse down the hall was worried about you.”

“Oh.” Eduardo laughs shortly. “That was for show.”

“For show?”

“Were you worried?”

“What?”

“You said the nurse was worried. Were you worried?”

Mark pretends he’s too busy looking at road signs.

“Why are you even helping me?” Eduardo takes the opportunity to ask. “Last I checked, we had a major falling-out.”

Mark remembers that cold January day when they settled like it’s yesterday.

“Things have changed,” he murmurs. “Besides, you waited for me.”

Eduardo frowns. “What do you mean?”

“You could have just left,” Mark explains. “From the hospital. You didn’t have to wait for me.”

Eduardo stays quiet. “Where are we going?”

“Somewhere safe.”

Eduardo scoffs. “I was probably safer at the hospital.”

“You changed rooms. You weren’t eating your food when I visited last time. Someone was after you, right?” 

Eduardo looks out the passenger window again, doesn’t respond.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Mark drives them to a mall. Eduardo has quickly learned not to question Mark’s moves and motives anymore - perhaps it’s because he’s been there and done that. 

They get lost in the crowd, slip into a small boutique, change clothes in a narrow fitting room.

Eduardo turns his back to Mark when he takes his shirt off, and that’s when Mark sees all the scars painted across it. 

Mark looks away and wills himself to stop thinking about them. 

But it’s hard.

He wonders briefly how the scars would feel under his touch. How it would feel to trace them. Claw them. Claim them as his own.

“Mark?” Eduardo murmurs tentatively. He turns around. “What now?”

Mark takes a deep breath. “Now, we disappear.”  
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
They leave the mall in a different car.

They leave without a trail, without a tail. Leave their old lives far behind.  
  
  
  
*  
  
  
  
The drive is long, and the night is young. They’re parked at the side of the road to take a break. Mark tells Eduardo the plan and hands him an envelope with airplane tickets and fake passports. The air is cool.

Eduardo says, “so you’re kidnapping me of your own volition.” 

“Eloping with,” Mark corrects. 

Eduardo rolls his eyes, but he’s grinning. 

Eduardo then looks at the flight tickets in his hands. “Why Singapore?”

“João doesn’t have any connections there. Clean slate.”

Eduardo stays quiet, gaze still lowered. “João? How do you-- where--” he sighs. “Do I want to ask?” 

“Long story short, I’d do anything for you,” Mark replies. 

“I want the long story.”

“I’m a cybercriminal with too much time to spare. I make some threats, then get things done.”

Eduardo considers the vague answer. “And why should I trust you? You’ve hurt me before.”

“True,” Mark says, trying hard not to let the flashbacks overwhelm him. “All I can say is that you and I both know that our mess is no walk in the park to untangle. I’m trying my best on my end, and you honestly have worse things to worry about. Anyways, it’s your call.”

Eduardo sits down on the hood of the car and sighs. “My father’s going to hunt you down as long as he’s alive.”

“João’s buried six feet under,” Mark says.

Eduardo looks up. “What?”

“There’s this elm tree in my backyard I’d been growing since I left Facebook,” Mark explains. “I left him under it.”

Eduardo scoffs. “Jesus.”

Mark continues. “Actually, it’s just his heart. Like, the organ. Didn’t have time to dig a deep enough hole for the whole body. I also left chicken bones on top just to spite him and distract dogs.” 

A glimpse of João’s decapitated corpse flashes through Mark’s mind. He shakes it off.

Eduardo looks at Mark in disbelief. “Is this your way of talking dirty?”

Mark shrugs. “What does a guy have to do to get a kiss around here?”

Eduardo eyes Mark. There’s a glint of something that wasn’t there before. 

Eduardo leans forward, and Mark backs away a little.

“What?” Eduardo says.

“I’m… aren’t you scared of what I’ve become?” Mark murmurs nervously.

There’s an awkward pause as Eduardo studies him, and it makes Mark shift and lower his gaze. 

He’s both proud and not proud of what he’s done. He presses his hands together, still seeing the blood on them. It’s not the blood that scares him - it’s the pleasure he felt when stabbing João through the skull with a dart. The satisfaction of a personal revenge, the lack of remorse, the lengths he’d go for Eduardo. 

That scares him.

Eduardo lifts Mark’s chin and looks. There’s softness in his eyes. Mark wonders how much Eduardo can see - the eye with the scar seems a hint paler. 

Partial blindness, Mark remembers. Who did it? His mind starts ticking again. His mouth goes dry. 

“Aren’t you scared of what I know?” Eduardo counters. 

Mark shakes his head. Because it’s true. 

Eduardo smiles.

“Remember the algorithm on the window at Kirkland?” Eduardo whispers into the growing dark.

“Yeah,” Mark says.  
  
  
  
Eduardo leans over and kisses him just as the last of eventide skies disappear behind quiet hills.  
  
  
  
It’s gentle, Mark thinks.

Too gentle.

**Author's Note:**

> fluff next time i promise


End file.
